Due to a 'balls-up' with our staff (!) , this blog will publish only on Mondays , Wednesdays and Fridays .Until.......
PADDY COONEY'S ARMY ....... Not since the earliest days of the State has the role of the Irish Army (sic) been under such intense scrutiny . And not since the war years has it had such a forceful political master as Patrick Mark Cooney .
From 'The Phoenix' magazine , 3 February 1984 .
(Free State) Brig. Gen. Gerry O' Sullivan is Paddy Cooney's choice to head up the State Army at what Cooney believed was 'a time of change' : and that 'change' basically means a greater internal role for the State Army in law enforcement in this country (sic) - the young colonels cannot be displeased .
Few people realise the extent to which the State Army has become involved in semi-policing work over the past decade : in 1982 for instance -
* Over 21,000 military parties were supplied in Border areas for check-point duties and over 17,000 joint Garda/State Army checkpoints were set up .
* More than 11,000 patrols were sent out into the road network along the Border .
* Escorts for explosives and blasting operations were provided on over 1,200 occasions .
* About 150 requests for bomb disposal teams were handled.......
(MORE LATER).
SHOOT TO KILL .......The unchanging face of repression .
PETER HAYES examines reactions to the latest shoot-to-kill deaths .
From 'IRIS' magazine , March 1983.
John Hume's own craven belief in the 'right' of the RUC and the British Army to repress nationalists as long as it is done within the 'extraordinary' legal framework of the Orange State , was well expressed early in December 1982 -
" No-one objects to any person being arrested for any crime for which they are suspected , charged and brought before the courts . This is the due process of law . But to authorise their instant execution or attempted execution , as has now happened on five separate occasions in recent times , is in effect to abandon the rule of law completely . "
The Catholic hierarchy also made meaningless calls for public enquiries but even these 'words of concern' were ignored by the British , who set about to white-wash the shoot-to-kill policy.......
(MORE LATER).
PILLARS OF SOCIETY : EOGHAN HARRIS .......From 'The Phoenix' magazine , October 1985 .
Politically , Anne O' Sullivan (Harris) is formed in the image of her husband , Eoghan : her public praise of the Official IRA bombers at Aldershot , who killed five cleaning women and a priest at Aldershot Britsh Army Barracks in 1972 , is unlikely to have caused a row in the Harris household , and , today , Anne's sexual crusade against the Catholic clergy , coupled with her execration of things republican or rural , mirrors the route her husband has followed since the 1960's .
Ironically , given his now rabid anti-republicanism , Eoghan Harris first attracted attention as a talented young producer in RTE with a series of religious discussion programmes , but it was with 'Feach' , where he collaborated with Brendan O hEithir , that he made his best programmes .
A competent programme-maker as well as a good publicist - he stage-managed a walk-out by Official Sinn Fein leader Tomas MacGiolla , from one programme , - Eoghan Harris and Brendan O hEithir brought Irish cultural affairs to the nation's attention in a relevant and lively manner that has not often been repeated since.......
(MORE LATER).
